Velocity runs on a variety of platforms that have installed the Java 2
Virtual Machine. The J2SDK is required for users who want to compile
Velocity from its source code.

Everything required to build Velocity comes with the distribution, which
can be obtained from CVS or
from the nightly
builds. However, you will need to install Ant, an excellent
Java-based build tool. Ant is also a Jakarta project, and can be
found here.

To make building Velocity easy and consistant, we require a Jakarta project
called Ant version 1.3 or
higher to perform the build process. We assume that you have followed
Ant's installation instructions and have it properly installed. It's not
difficult, and I think that you will find it an excellent addition to
your programmer's toolbox.

In each case below, it is assumed that you were successful in getting
the distribution from CVS or as a nightly build, and with the latter,
were successful in unpacking. Also, it is assumed that you are starting
in the 'jakarta-velocity' directory, the root of the distribution tree.
All directory references will be relative to 'jakarta-velocity'.

Executing this script will create a bin directory
within the Velocity distribution directory. The bin
directory will contain the compiled class files (inside a
classes directory) as well as a
velocity-XX.jar file, where XX is the current
version number. Be sure to update your classpath to include Velocity's
.jar file.

Note that to build any of the specific build targets, as detailed in
the developers guide, simply add
the target name to the command line. For example, to build the Javadoc
API documentation :

ant javadocs

Velocity should build 'out of the box', independent of your classpath.
If you get an error building Velocity, try a different nightly build (as
sometimes we make a mistake and the CVS at the time of the nightly
snapshot isn't complete) or refresh from CVS (you might have gotten a
CVS snapshot while a developer was checking things in.)

If the problems persist, do not hesitate to ask the Velocity community
via our mail lists. They can be found here. Please read
and understand the the guidelines for participating in any Jakarta mail
list.